9 Marvels Of Modern Lighting For Your Apartment

Without a doubt, the greatest aspect of contemporary lighting is the sheer variety that awaits interior designers. While old-fashioned lamp-fixtures of the Victorian era may have their decadent allure, their shimmering crystal and glass ornaments and complexity of form, they can be somewhat limited in shape, colour, texture and material.

Modern lighting, however, is not bound by decorum or restrained in any way.

From bizarre and fanciful shapes to diversity of materials including copper, iron and even wood, from audacious colours to exposed wiring, contemporary light-fixtures give way to unbridled imagination and creative expression.

If you're looking for something to light up your home, here are 9 examples that may help.

This cluster of suspended lamps lends this apartment a rugged industrial edge.

The exposed wiring, dark colours, and asymmetrical (almost careless) bunching of the lights conveys a look of incompleteness, which is perfect for an urban interior that aims for a rough and unfinished appearance.

This contemporary Scandinavian interior uses mixed metals to achieve a level of sophistication and elegance—

and it's made even more unique by the modern light which hangs from the ceiling.

With its uneven contours, jagged wooden limbs, and candle-shaped lamps, this rustic light-fixture conforms to the room's use of mixed metals while visually distinguishing itself through a natural coarseness and lack of symmetry.

Whereas the first example had an industrial edge, this interior has an organic one.

These hanging lights immediately draw the eye through their lovely variations in form but achieve unity through a shared yellow and black colouring, which also matches the chairs below and the wall-mounted cubes on the right.

Here, these starkly minimalist lights exhibit a disheveled and untidy quality through their tangle of exposed wires, but rather than looking unattractive they produce a radical-chic effect, one that synthesizes with the chaos and disorder of their environment.

Upon first glance this picture seems to show a restaurant located in the downtown core of a major city like New York or Chicago, but it is in fact a residential apartment. While the brick layout, diner-like seats, chalkboard and iron grilling in the backdrop all contribute to this industrial look, so do the warehouse-style lamps.

They appear to be straight out of a factory, and the use of chain-links and limited colours imbues them with an austere aesthetic that's nicely suited to such an urban decor.

Of all the examples we've seen thus far, perhaps none of them is so perfectly attuned to its surroundings as this one. The rectangular shape, black and white colouring, and contemporary aesthetic matches everything in the room, from the dark chairs, striped table, monochromatic pillows, sable curtains, light-toned floors, walls and ceiling, and of course the geometric panels of glass.

This light-fixture unifies the entire home while being distinct enough to catch our eye: cohesion plus singularity—the best of both worlds.

There we have it. Nine contemporary lighting options, each unique in shape and aesthetics but also functional in use.